Here’s what I learned from readers: Ontarians don’t know every dirty detail about how suds are sold, but they know a dud when see one.

Many readers had no idea this 440-store cartel is foreign-owned. And the more they know about it, the less they like it.

Not everyone is an economic nationalist — certainly not Tory Leader Tim Hudak, the latest politician to call for selling beer in corner stores. But the idea that your unfriendly local beer monopoly is run out of Belgium, Brazil, Japan and America sticks in the craw of every drinker.

When Anheuser-Busch InBev, Molson Coors and Sapporo are dictating the terms of sale in your home province, you have to wonder why your elected government still acts as an enabler by enacting regulations that ban any real competition. (Technically the beer market is a duopoly, but the LCBO sells only higher-priced foreign brands, mostly in six-packs. If you want a case of 24 domestic beers, you’re stuck with The Beer Store — hence its 80-per-cent market share.)

The Beer Store is not so much a miserable retail experience as it is a misplaced wholesale encounter. In no other retail emporium on the planet (outside of North Korea) is the customer encouraged to spend so little time on the premises exploring other products, while being milked for so much money. Hence its nickname, the “In and Out Store.”

Drinkers are expected to know in advance which brand they wish to order, rather than coming in to browse through beer displays for fresh inspiration. This serves the vested interests of the major foreign-owned brewers, because they can count on their massive advertising and marketing expenditures to implant their brands in the minds of drinkers before they ever arrive at The Beer Store.

Upstart craft brewers must fight for exposure in this squeeze play: Customers are reduced to squinting at dusty wall displays of fading beer labels before placing their orders.

It’s not modern retailing, it’s sabotage. Even the “Ice Cold Express” that offers up the top 10 beers in refrigerated display cases is rigged to bolster the iron grip of the bestselling brands by freezing out the competition.

It’s not just the flow of beer, but the cash flow that remains tightly controlled. The Beer Store doesn’t like to acknowledge “profits,” preferring to use the term “cost-recovery” — and still refuses to disclose the results. By how much does this its cash “recovery” exceeds its “costs?” As a privately-held monopoly, The Beer Store keeps its balance sheet hidden.

A fascinating insider’s view comes from one of the first readers to respond last week: Perry Davidson wrote to me about his time as vice-president of “operations and retail renewal” at The Beer Store a decade ago, when he unveiled a new concept store in Burlington that put more than 300 brands out on the floor. Customers were pleased, but his bosses weren’t.

“The owners were not happy. Why, you might ask? Well, when customers saw the wide variety of ‘new’ brands on the floor, Labatt’s and Molson’s Blue and Canadian lost significant market share in the self serve stores,” Davidson explained.

“Thus the ‘ice cold express’ stores were born ... Perhaps 30 brands made their way to the shelves, but none better represented than Molson Canadian and Labatt’s Blue. In these stores, their market share increased, despite customers in general being less than pleased with the logistics of the store.”

Davidson says it added up to “limiting competition and enhancing their own market share. All at the expense of an unsuspecting public.”

His conclusion: “It’s a corrupt system, now made even worse as the monopoly is owned by foreigners ... Keep the pressure on.”

Surprisingly, most readers grudgingly agreed that we should leave the LCBO alone — at least for now. A monopoly it may be, but the LCBO’s stores are well regarded and it funnels massive profits to our treasury.

Yes, there is room for improvement, but there is far less resentment of the LCBO than you’d expect. The Tory plan to liberate our beer has massive support. But Hudak’s scheme to break up the LCBO looks financially self-defeating and lacks a consensus.

Never mind the LCBO. The Beer Store is the real story.

When it comes to beer, you can fool some of the drinkers all of the time and frustrate all of them some of the time. But you cannot dupe all drinkers all of the time.